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Hippolyte Pixii

Electricity & Grid Pioneers

Hippolyte Pixii was a French instrument maker who in 1832 built the first practical electrical generator based on Michael Faraday's newly discovered principle of electromagnetic induction. His device rotated a horseshoe magnet past two coils of wire to produce an alternating current, and at the suggestion of the physicist Andre-Marie Ampere he added a commutator to convert the output to direct current, making his magneto generator the direct mechanical ancestor of the dynamos and alternators that would electrify the world later in the century.

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